The Puppy Bowl is adorable. It is also a house of lies.
Perhaps that is too strong. Perhaps a better phrase to describe how Animal Planet creates the Puppy Bowl is "TV magic," the catch-all term for the tireless work of camera operators, production assistants and video editors, who take 90 hours of video footage from three days of filming in October and whittle it down to a seamless two-hour package that airs in February.
That’s right: the Puppy Bowl was filmed in October, and I was there. All those puppies that make you squeal with glee? They’ve already been adopted and are housebroken by now. You cannot adopt them. You never had a chance to. It’s a testament to the Puppy Bowl’s production -- and to the cuteness of the puppies -- that its central purpose (Adopt a shelter dog!) can also deliver a cruel gut-punch (... but none of these, they’re taken).
Not that any of this mattered to me behind the scenes. When you are in a room filled with puppies, worries melt away. There are no car payments, no problems at home, no looming meetings with your boss. Just soft little bundles of fur to cuddle and play with.
It almost makes you forget that there’s no actual tiny blimp piloted by hamsters.